As you know, the Trump administration enacted a monstrous policy to separate children from parents at the southern border. Yesterday, the AP reported that about 2,000 children were stolen from their parents in the last six weeks. Camps — for children! — are in the works.

But while the thought of putting brown children in kiddie jails may make MAGAchuds somewhat less flaccid, this cruel policy isn’t popular outside the base. Even the usually supine White House press corps roused itself to drag Sarah Huckabee-Sanders over it this week. Even preening fraud and avid Trump butt-plug Franklin Graham managed to condemn it.

Trump isn’t smart, but he has a schoolyard bully’s knack for reading a crowd, so he’s shooting out squid ink clouds of lies to evade responsibility for his own policy. He’s blaming Democrats, who control zero branches of government, for a law that doesn’t exist, even while his own toadies, including John Kelly and Jeff Sessions, are on the record defending the abhorrent Trump administration policy as a measure to deter immigration.

Yesterday, Trump wandered outside the Fox News media bubble and got some push-back on his lies about the family separation policy:

In the clip, Trump keeps lying and gets snippy with the reporters. You can tell he’s not used to such impertinence — Steve Doocy and crew had lined up to blow him moments before, so being aggressively questioned must have been jarring. But we can tell the push-back landed because Trump later expanded the scope of the lie via this ridiculous White House statement:

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS’ FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY: Too many American families have been permanently separated from loved ones lost to illegal alien crime.

Open border laws and policies are responsible for the permanent separation of too many American families whose loved ones have been lost to illegal alien crime.

President Trump has met with family members whose loved ones have fallen victim to illegal alien crime.

Conflating this form of “family separation” with another fools no one, of course, but it’s a return to familiar ground. Demonizing undocumented immigrants has been a pillar of Trump’s strategy since the day he launched his campaign. Even the so-called straight news programs on Fox reinforce this nonsense by calling parents whose children have been killed by undocumented immigrants “Angel Moms” and “Angel Dads,” as if they’re more special than the order-of-magnitude larger group of parents who’ve lost children to homegrown gun violence.

But I don’t think reverting to form is going to make the backlash to caging immigrant children go away; Trump’s ham-handed ploy has a whiff of desperation about it. A Pence speech got interrupted by protesters yesterday. Thousands have marched nationwide. Democrats in Congress are relentlessly calling attention to the issue and planning more trips to the border.

So, what’s the endgame here? I’m not sure if Trump and his minions enacted this evil policy to force Democrats to negotiate on immigration or if they did it just because they enjoy torturing brown people and know racist cruelty plays well with the base. But now, at least, Trump seems to think he can hold these kids hostage — much as he’s holding young Americans in DACA status hostage — to force Congress to fund his racist vanity wall and curtail legal immigration.

My guess is the Trumpsters have overplayed their hand with this heinous policy and will be forced by public outcry to walk it back. Moreover, the sheer evil of the policy and cynical, bald-faced lying about it seem to have activated the dormant outrage gene even in the Beltway press, which had grown inured to scandal and shocking behavior. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

In the meantime, if you see ANY Republican in public, including the mayor of your population 511 town, ask them about the Trump administration’s family separation policy. If you’re unlucky enough to be represented by a Republican senator or congresscritter, ask them about it. The bastards are squirming, and that’s a good thing.

Every single Republican candidate for office anywhere needs to be asked one question.

“Do you approve of the separation of children from their parents at the border regardless of the legality of the crossing?”

If yes, make them justify ripping families apart. And hang them on their statements. Because that renders them ineligible for any office anywhere.

If no, get a firm commitment from them to act to stop it from their political leaders or again unworthy of a vote.

If they hedge or bluster or avoid the question, KEEP ASKING. There is no running from an inhumane policy that EVERY Republican needs to answer for. Make them own it.

@MattF: He’s on to his next step already: pin the blame on someone else. NONE of this is his fault, it’s all the Democrats! He would end it all tomorrow if he could, but the rotten Democrats oppose his beautiful mercy! He already played that in the news clip in the tweet above.

An immigration bill is making its way through Congress which will gut legal immigration by 50% and shred due process for anyone apprehended by ICE in return for stopping this inhumane policy and giving DACA recipients a life line, a temporary status that they have to keep renewing indefinitely and could lose if their income falls below certain minimum.

@TopherSpiro
5m5 minutes ago
Wow. This is the private letter @SenatorCollins is sending to her constituents rationalizing Trump’s policy of separating children from their families. #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/WmY5ZQYxUQ

I’m not sure if Trump and his minions enacted this evil policy to force Democrats to negotiate on immigration or if they did it just because they enjoy torturing brown people and know racist cruelty plays well with the base.

Trump is a racist. He hates non-white people. He is cruel because it pleases him to be so.

He is stubborn about his core beliefs, one of which is to hurt non-white people as much as possible. He can be opposed, but he will not back down.

He has continuously demonized and scapegoated black and brown people. He cannot retract this. He has consistently used Dreamers as pawns to get his way on immigration, and keeps coming back to the same points.

What do you tell Liza, Charlie, and Sam about the 2,000 children seized from their parents in the last six weeks? How would you like to see them penned up with bad food and only two hours a day outside?— Mary Michel Green (@marymichelgreen) June 16, 2018

So did more than 8,000 other people, which made an awesome ratio over 1,200 likes. Not much, but it made me feel better.

The “This is a Democrat Law” stuff is all for low-information voters. The Trumpists repeat it over and over as a smoke-screen (which allows them to later claim that “where there’s smoke there must be fire”), and confident in the knowledge that a lie repeated often enough will become the “truth”.

Come November, some people who don’t have time off will look at the long lines at under-supplied polling places just won’t think it makes as much difference as getting supper ready for the kids or getting to the second job.

When trump walked about 50 yards from the Faux news oral sex session to the group of reporters, he seemed visibly out of breath…maybe we’ll get lucky. Sometimes it seems he can barely make it up the steps of Air Force 1. Cancer survivor Jimmy Carter at 93 gets around better than trump.

@Omnes Omnibus: There are two immigration bills that are being considered to be voted upon by the Rs as early as next week. The one so called moderate bill which is nothing of the kind and has most of T’s wish list, and the one which being written by Goodlatte (sp?) which is even more horrible. So its in very early stages.
Alex Nowrasteh ‘s op-ed in LA Times about the same.http://www.latimes.com/opinion.....story.html

The Dems should be pushing the Feinstein bill loudly and at every opportunity. They should be asking to go on the Sunday shows and, for that matter, every show during the week to talk about it. If they’re not invited, they should ask why they’re not being invited.

Simple message: The President is lying about being required to separate children from parents, but all we care about is reversing this terrible policy. Why won’t Republicans join us in supporting this bill?

@schrodingers_cat: At this point, I doubt either of those (awful) bills will pass the House, much less the Senate. The so-called “moderate” bill was carefully crafted to attract precisely zero Democratic votes, and there are enough right-right-right-(…)-wing lunatics in the House who will vote against it because it’s not evil enough

I’m not sure how effective this is. Here in LA there was a march on Thursday(I believe) in DTLA and one was scheduled for Echo Park today. Here’s an idea, there’s a golf course in Palos Verdes called Trump National Golf Course, shut the fucker down.

When trump walked about 50 yards from the Faux news oral sex session to the group of reporters, he seemed visibly out of breath…maybe we’ll get lucky.

Macron’s handshake leaving a thumbprint made a lot of people suspect heart failure. That would help explain his recent weight gain. Quite possibly he’s not even getting treated for whatever conditions he has (he’s obviously not well), given that he insists on doctors that lie.

I also think the scripture quoting by the KKKleebler elf and lyins as SHS, made ALOT of folks call out their “Christian” relatives (I know I did, I have a sister, who’s progressive mostly, but she’s very religious and can get REAL preachy)…and a nubmer of “legit” Christian orgs were very uncomfortable with Sessions using the scripture as justification

It is not simply GOP elected officials whom need to be made to squirm. Any friends, family, acquaintances who supported the Orange Idjit need to squirm as well. They own what he does and should be reminded of this early and often, IMO.

@schrodingers_cat: I hear you on the intent being worrisome, but any member of Congress can introduce any kind of bill. Getting it out of committee and getting a majority vote for it is another thing. We already know they are racist, xenophobic assholes. Worry about what needs worrying. The kids, yes. These two bills, I think not.

@Omnes Omnibus: The compromise bill has the blessing of the Congressional leadership and the WH, its not a bill floated by some lone crackpot Congressman. This is the official R thinking on immigration.

The Carters (Beyoncé and Jay-Z) just dropped a song called “Apeshit” where they are in museums dressed to kill and dripping in jewels. I can’t make sense of words where there is no closed captioning, so I have to wait for expert interpretation, but there is a lot of gratitude (the chorus is “I can’t believe we made it”) and what I assume is shade in the form of anti-NFL in his rap and the production is gorgeous. It fades out with them in front of the Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile.

@Omnes Omnibus: These two bills aren’t going through the committee process; Ryan is bringing them directly to the floor for a vote as I understand it. Doesn’t mean that either one will pass, but that’s one less block point.

Trump and the GOP legislators will continue to push racist and xenophobic legislation.

Worry about what needs worrying. The kids, yes.

We will see what happens. They may try to blame Democrats for any failed bill. “We tried to help these kids, but the Democrats would not work with us.”

Otherwise, we keep having to watch Trump do variations of “give me what I want, or these Dreamers, these kids, etc, will get hurt.” Trump loves this tactic, and Republican lawmakers love to go along with it.

@schrodingers_cat: Despite some people saying that all of our institutions are failing, process can come to the rescue. I can’t help with the unease because these fuckers are just evil – Nazi level evil.

We’re at the uga vet school emergency room.Lil Bits Larpar has gotten really bad. I took her to our regular vet this morning because she really stuggled and vomited last night. We sat down to eat and she started choking, foaming at the mouth and her tongue turned blue. We’ll see.

My ex-wife is a Nurse Practitioner, a cardiology specialist. M says in addition to the physical symptoms, short attention span, anger and the inability to concentrate are very typical in male heart patients. That and refusing to take proper care of themselves.

M told me, when she sees trump, he looks like a high percentage of her male patients, mainly the guys who refuse to take care of themselves after diagnosis or surgery.

A vet med student came out and let us know she was in an oxygen tent and the episode is under control. Someone came in with a doggie in worse shape so our situation will have to wait a bit. We’ve know what was coming but it doesn’t help that much whe she’s in such distress. The hard part is coming up, we’ve vowed not to let a dog suffer because of us so, like I said, well see. We appreciate the vibes.

Sessions and Kelly and Miller enacted the policy to torture brown people, because that is what they enjoy. Trump sees it as an opportunity to hold children hostage so Democrats will negotiate. He is very open about that being his goal, though he puts it in language blaming Democrats for not doing anything to help the children.

Democrats need to hammer the words “hostages” and “ransom” repeatedly, with the message discipline that Republicans usually use. Make the point that they are willing to negotiate with the hostage-taker if that is what it takes, but the wall is clearly part of the ransom.

@eclare: it’s funny, when raven got cancer we had to take him to Auburn because they had the right equipment for his case. Lil Bit’s cardiologist recommended a local board certified surgeon but our vet was leaning toward here. The folks in front of me just got told that there bill was $1300 for just now and they were stunned. I hate to keep saying “we’ll see”.

@lamh36: there needs to be constant pressure put on congress to locate the kidnapped girls…the little nonchalant answer that some kids may have been turned over to human traffickers should have set off alarms with a concerted effort to locate ALL the kids “processed” by border / ice .

“It’s not our job” should be the END of the person’s job that utters it when their agency is responsible for taking kids away from their parents / housing them.

There seems to be a belief that taking back the House will stop the descent. The courts are a different matter. The GOP seems to be winning that battle. As a gay man with many friends with kids it’s deeply worrisome. Our neighbors are black and brown. Many are recent immigrants. We alternate between trying to hold back the dread and freaking out. There have been recent incidents of racist attacks in our minority majority neighborhood, mostly crazy people but it’s new since Trump.

@Dan B: In the last few months there seem to be even more increases in racist attacks, verbal and physical, out in the open no matter the witnesses. We have to fight this very hard. And ask for statements about racism from every candidate and office holder, right down to school board and local police chief.

Some have said “don’t blame the people who are doing their best” to care for the imprisoned children, which Southwest Key has made a point of retweeting. I’m OK with that if S’west Key (board and management) were forthcoming with information, but they’re holding their cards too close to the chest. (If that’s in their gov’t contract, say so. If gov’t officials are giving them orders, say so.)

As a nonprofit their public filings of spending (and payments to for-profit contractors) are available to the public on request. I’d like to see the accounting of their spending and the names of their board members. As a nonprofit they should be keeping good records of their numbers. As an org that houses children, their records should be impeccable and detailed.

These quotes are what they told the Houston Chronicle:

1/3
1- “When a child arrives at the Brownsville shelter, he or she receives a healthcare screening and meets with a case worker, who contacts parents and a potential sponsor in the United States, ideally a family member.”

But I’ve seen reports that many parents say they have never been contacted, do not know where their kids are, or believed the kids would be returned to them after getting cleaned up.

2-“Children are placed with relatives or put into a federal foster care system, a process that is overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. ”

I want to know, what policies are in place to protect chilfren from being abused or lost in the system?

3-“New arrivals are kept apart from the general population for a period of 48 hours until their medical exams are completed.”

What policies are in place to protect chilfren from being abused by workers or other children?

4-“Southwest Key maintains a ratio of one case manager for every eight kids, and one clinician for every 12 kids. There are also 48 medical staff and three on-call physicians, Sanchez said. Overall, the facility has 1,267 employees.”

What are the other jobs? How many employees in each job? How many on the night staff?

What is the ratio for and method of supervision of staff members? How many staff are on the floor, night and day, to respond to children in distress? What policies are in place to protect chilfren from being abused by workers or other children?

5-“The 250,000 square-foot building has classrooms where kids take six hours of instruction Monday through Friday. Currently they are learning about the U.S. branches of government.”

Are these classes being taught by human teachers or is it online instruction? Is a for-profit company being paid for the classes?

Whose decision is it to teach them “the US branches of gov’t”? Why teach this if kids and parents are not assured they may stay?

Why not classes in language and writing and human rights? The US bill of rights? The history of of immigrants in this country?

If learning about the branches of gov’t is important for these children, why aren’t their parents also being given those classes? Or is it just a sham?

6- “The children are released two hours per day for outdoor activity, and taken on excursions around Brownsville.”

Is money going into private hands for these excursions? If so to whom?

7-“A lot of (the children) said they had heard a lot of anti-immigrant things Donald Trump had said,” said Diana Gomez, who conducted legal screenings inside the shelter for several months in 2017. “They were fleeing violence in their homes to seek opportunity and a better life in the U.S. … They saw Donald Trump as a person who would be a threat to that hope and eventually deport them back to their country where they would face inevitable death.”

Why doesn’t Diana Gomez work there any more?

8-“A week ago when U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, was barred from entering and local police were called.” “On Wednesday, in answer to a question about that, shelter officials said they didn’t know Merkley and they had no security on site to verify his identity.”

This sounds false. Who is the official who had the final say in barring him and in verifying his identity?

I can’t really comment on this whole child abuse thing very well. I just want to RAGE in all caps, and using vile language which applies to those from the top — Trump — all the way down to individual enforcement agents in the field, along the border.

Those agents should be informed that “I was just following policy, following orders…” was not acceptable for those guards in Europe in the middle of the last century, and it won’t excuse crimes being committed by government employees today either.

These border agents and private contractor employees are quite likely guilty of kidnapping and associated child abuse crimes. These people better wake up and realize they are committing crimes, not executing a job according to laws and policies. It is criminal conduct, and ignorance nor policy is no excuse.

I won’t be commenting much, because I can’t control myself very well right now.

9-“State health regulators have within the last year documented numerous violations at Casa Padre. Texas state health regulators found about 150 violations across the nonprofit’s 16 Texas shelters. Sanchez said that on occasion a child has run away. Others who the shelter workers can’t handle have had to be transferred to other facilities.”

Where are those children transferred to? What medical care have they received? How are they treated ?

10- “With the number of immigrants arriving at the Southwest border plummeting to historic lows in May 2017, the nonprofit laid off hundreds of its employees. A year later, Casa Padre is almost at capacity. Officials couldn’t say how many of the laid-off employees had been rehired or how quickly they were able to staff up again.”

Why couldn’t they answer that? If they are any good at accounting, I’m sure that they have records available. Many organizations that lay off and rehire employees according to fluctuations keep track of their former employees and know exactly the number of rehires.

A nonprofit should have good record keeping, and an organization that is housing and treating children should have impeccable record keeping.

How do their employee numbers and ratios before May 17 compare to today’s?

11. “The Trump administration is considering tent cities at military posts around Texas to house the rising number of migrant children in detention.”

Does the military confirm that possibility? Have they been informed or consulted?

12. “Reuters has reported 1,800 family separations between October 2016 and February.” “The majority of unaccompanied minors who arrived during the last fiscal year, which ended in September, were older than 15, and nearly 70 percent were male, according to ORR data. Children spent an average of 49 days in Casa Padre; the goal is one month.”

What are those numbers by month since February? For the children who’ve arrived with parents and were separated?

If these numbers are not available, their record keeping is bullshit or they are refusing to disclose.